The scientific conception of species and its impact on popular representations of
human taxonomy and evolution in Mexican visual culture

The scientific conception of species and its impact on popular representations of human taxonomy and evolution in Mexican visual culture

Ana Barahona & Erica Torrens

If we think of concepts that have been decisive to the development of biological taxonomy
in general, and of human beings in particular, the terms ‘species’ and ‘race’ undoubtedly
come to mind. Scientific conceptions of race have drifted in space and time since
the seventeenth century. Naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon, philosophers such
as Kant and Locke and other scholars such as Hobbes and Bernier have historically
contributed to defining and restraining human diversity.

In this talk, the authors seek to provide a historiographic account of the concepts
of species and race, to comment on the use of the former, first as a tool for measuring
biodiversity and later as a conservation unit; and about the latter as a factor of
impact on the taxonomy of human beings. To this end, we are interested in showing
how both concepts have interacted in the visual characterization of human diversity.
We know today that race belongs to the realm of human culture, whereas the concept
of species is inherent to biological thought. However, it is interesting to look at
how the worlds of racial and human species classification have converged into a murky
realm of supposed objectivity and of human creativity and imagination. For the latter,
we will review important contributions to the genesis of the concept of race and the
racialization of human beings, as well as its recent use in biological and anthropological
classifications, within a global context.

To conclude, we will turn our attention to how the new scientific conceptions of race
and human species that appeared in the late eighteenth century gave rise to a novel
visual culture (in terms of the Mexican scenario) to show how the discourse of both
racial hierarchies and the characterization of species have been supported by pictorial
representation. This in turn has been important for non-specialists in forging a deeply
entrenched distinction between human diversity and other living entities, positioning
humans outside the natural and evolutionary realm.

Furthermore, the authors will show how the categories used to characterize humans
are far from solely technical tools but rather cultural objects that travel from scientific
to non-scientific realms and back again, making the thin red line indistinct and subject
to scientific and philosophical enquiry.